The Review of Contemporary Fiction articles from June 2002

The Review of Contemporary Fiction archives from June 2002

Editors' acknowledgments.
June 22, 2002... In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention.--Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Dying" This special issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction could not have been assembled without the assistance of many different people, Americans and...

The Japanoid Manifesto: Toward a New Poetics of Invisible Culture.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... One day I couldn't help but fall in love with Invisible Culture. Ten years ago, in New York City. I'm not sure if you are alive and well, but I need you more than I love you. No, I'm not talking about either an abstract notion or a...

Introduction.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... Some Opening Remarks Art is something that exists in the slender margin between the real and the unreal. --Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being....

Thinking the Opposite: An Interview with Yoshio Aramaki.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... Yoshio Aramaki was born in Otaru, Japan, in 1933. An architect by training, he runs an art gallery as well as a construction company in Sapporo. Aramaki made a debut with his highly speculative fiction "Oinaru Shogo" (The Great Noon) and his...

Soft Clocks.(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... When I look at the stars in the sky, they appear so small. Either I am growing larger or the universe is shrinking--or both. --Salvador Dali It was noon on Mars. The party was already in full swing under blinding equatorial sunshine....

A Meaning in Art that's No Longer Possible: an Interview with Kiyoshi Kasai.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... Kiyoshi Kasai was born in Tokyo in 1948. Pursuing an early interest in politics, he attended Wako University, a center of student activism. Kasai joined a new-left political organization in 1968 and under the pseudonym Ryuji Kuroki was a...

Oedipus City.(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... A breeze arose at the street corner. Dried, yellow plantain leaves blown by the wind were making dry clattering sounds on the sidewalk. Leaning against the new art-styled street light, Yu was absentmindedly watching these autumn sights. This...

Not Just a Gibson Clone: an Interview with Goro Masaki.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... Although rumor has it that the man who uses the pen name Goro Masaki was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1957, the "real" Goro Masaki was born in Tokyo in 1986 on a Fujitsu word processor. He was heavily influenced by science fictions of Philip...

The Human Factor (from Evil Eyes).(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... The Central Information Bureau, Movement for Mind Reformation, aka MMR. Up close, the holo sign covering the entire facade is more vivid, so glorious it arrests speech and inspires genuflection. Beaming, enter fabulous hall, ushered by young...

Bird outside the Cage: an Interview with Yumi Matsuo.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... Yumi Matsuo was born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, in 1960. After studying English literature at Ochanomizu Women's University, she worked for a major electronic company for several years. Her first publication, Ijigen kafe terasu (Coffee...

Murder in Balloon Town.(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... A Note Regarding the Foundation of the Special Seventh Ward 1. Objective for the Establishment: This special ward will be established with the goal of offering a space for living and superior residential space to nurture expectant...

It Don't Mean a Thing, If It Ain't Got That Swing: an Interview with Haruki Murakami.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... The Japanese author who has best captured the odd combination of consumerist abundance and spiritual emptiness that has characterized Japanese life during the past twenty-five years is Haruki Murakami. Born in 1949 in Kyoto and raised in Kobe...

Three German Fantasies.(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... 1. Pornography vis-a-vis a museum-in-winter. Sex. Intercourse. Coition. Copulation. There are many other words, but what I always conjure up in my mind (from the spoken word, the act, the phenomenon) is a museum-in-winter. A...

The Twister of Imagination: an Interview with Mariko Ohara.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... Mariko Ohara was born in Osaka in 1959. Long an admirer of the SF works of A. E. van Vogt and Cordwainer Smith, as a student at Sacred Heart University she published a novella, Hitori de Aruite Itta Neko (The Cat Who Walked Alone), which won...

The Mental Female.(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... Techie and Kipple had coupled in every possible position, in every corner of the city, across 100 million TV sets. They'd shown it all, and nobody could turn them off. Techie, when vertical, stood ten inches tall in his virile metal armor of...

Sophisticated Masochism: an Interview with Masahiko Shimada.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... Masahiko Shimada was born in Tokyo in 1961 and moved to Kawasaki when he was four years old. As a junior at Tokyo University of Foreign Languages, Shimada published the novella Yasashii Sayoku No Tame No Kiyukyoku (A Divertimento for Leftists,...

Stalled at a Kiss (from Master and Discipline).(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... "Humans were gone. Only their shadows remained. Reality too had vanished, leaving only fiction in its place. You and I are merely characters made to dance on the slightest wisp blown from a fiction which is always in progress, yet in which...

This Conflict between Illusion and Brutal Reality: an Interview with Yoriko Shono.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... Yoriko Shono was born in 1956 in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture. She lived with her parents in Ise until she finished high school; then she went to Nagoya where she spent two years at a university preparatory school. She was finally admitted to the...

Time Warp Complex.(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... All of this happened last summer. I was upset about a dream of being in love with a tuna when I got a call from either the tuna himself or Super Jetter, boy wonder of the comic books I read as a girl. I wasn't sure which, but the caller kept...

Why Not Have Fun?--an Interview with Gen'ichiro Takahashi.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... Gen'ichiro Takahashi was born in 1951. A radical student activist, he dropped out of Yokohama National University in 1969 and worked as a manual laborer throughout the 1970s. In 1982 he won the Gunzo Literary Award for First Novels for his...

Ghostbusters--an Adventure Story.(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid set off for the east. The detective from Pinkerton, together with the sheriffs, followed close behind them. A step out of town, there lay the desert. "So," the Sundance Kid asked Butch Cassidy, "Where are...

Keeping Not Writing: an Interview with Yasutaka Tsutsui.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... The Japanese guru of metafiction, Yasutaka Tsutsui is a novelist, playwright, literary critic, actor, and musician. The oldest of four brothers, Tsutsui was born in Osaka, 24 September 1934, and educated from 1953-57 at Doshisha University,...

Just a Nobody (from the Rumors about Me).
June 22, 2002... That morning, while commuting to work in a packed train, I glanced up at one of the hanging posters for a women's weekly magazine. I then let out a sharp cry of alarm. Reported: Mr. Tsutomu Morishita (28, Average Office Worker) Dated...

A (Very) Selective Bibliography of Modern and Postmodern Japanese Fiction and Culture (English Translation Only).(Bibliography)
June 22, 2002... Postmodern and Contemporary Japanese Fiction: Novels and Anthologies Abe, Kobo. The Ark Sakura. New York: Vintage, 1989. --. The Box Man. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1974. --. "The Crime of S. Karuma." Beyond the Curve. Trans. Julie Winters...

Gilbert Sorrentino. Little Casino.
June 22, 2002... Gilbert Sorrentino. Little Casino. Coffee House, 2002. 220 pp. Paper: $14.95. A little over halfway through the series of vignettes that compose Little Casino, an interlocutor steps in to remark, about the preceding passage: "`Dolores...

William H. Gass. Tests of Time.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... William H. Gass. Tests of Time. Knopf, 2002. 319 pp. $25.00. This fifth collection of Gass's essays covers several timely issues at the intersection of writing and politics. Among them are canon formation, moral influence, the impulses...

Claude Simon. The Jardin des Plantes.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Claude Simon. The Jardin des Plantes. Trans. and intro. Jordan Stump. Hydra/Northwestern Univ. Press, 2001. 288 pp. $29.95. In the style of the French nouveau roman, Claude Simon's 1997 book The Jardin des Plantes makes its debut in...

George Garrett. Going to See the Elephant: Pieces of a Writing Life.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... George Garrett. Going to See the Elephant: Pieces of a Writing Life. Ed. Jeb Livingood. Texas Review Press, 2002. 195 pp. Paper: $18.95. George Garrett has made important contributions to American literature, both prominent (his memorable...

Vladimir Paral. Lovers & Murderers.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Vladimir Paral. Lovers & Murderers. Trans. Craig Cravens. Catbird, 2002. 409 pp. $27.00. Vladimir Paral's lurid, graphic, wildly satiric 1969 novel mingles the conflicts of two breeds of comrade, Blue (having a private apartment) and Red...

Brion Gysin. Back in No Time: the Brion Gysin Reader.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Brion Gysin. Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader. Ed. Jason Weiss. Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2001.368 pp. Paper: $24.95. This splendid array of out of print, difficult to find, and previously unpublished work, spanning more than four...

Cees Nooteboom. All Souls Day.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Cees Nooteboom. All Souls Day. Trans. Susan Massotty. Harcourt, 2001. 338 pp. $25.00. The German word for history is Geschichte, and the Dutch one, geschiedenis. The suffix for the Dutch term, -nis, also means niche, notes Arthur Daane,...

David Mamet. Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... David Mamet. Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources. Overlook, 2001. 336 pp. $26.95. Born-again Christians, earnest lawyers (and the subphylum politicians), diligent academics: late-century postmodern sensibility finds irresistibly comic...

Carla Harryman. Gardener of Stars.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Carla Harryman. Gardener of Stars. Atelos, 2001. 179 pp. Paper: $12.95. Not knowing what a city should be anymore, Carla Harryman invents one. In Gardener of Stars we are in a city as dreamworld. In this imaginary landscape, fragmentation,...

Leonid Tsypkin. Summer in Baden-Baden.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Leonid Tsypkin. Summer in Baden-Baden. Trans. Roger and Angela Keys. Intro. Susan Sontag. New Directions, 2001. 146 pp. $23.95. Just when Susan Sontag thought she knew all the masterpieces of the late twentieth century, along came Leonid...

Antonio Lobo Antunes. The Return of the Caravels.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Antonio Lobo Antunes. The Return of the Caravels. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. Grove, 2002. 210 pp. $24.00. One of Antunes's slimmest books, The Return of the Caravels is also one of his most ambitious and most distinctly Portuguese....

David Mitchell. Number9Dream.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... David Mitchell. Number9Dream. Random House, 2002. 400 pp. $24.95. Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten, was a deeply humanist and intellectual novel that told a complex story in a readable and immediate manner. His second novel is even more...

William Kennedy. Roscoe.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... William Kennedy. Roscoe. Viking, 2002. 291 pp. $24.95. Throughout his career, William Kennedy has anatomized life in Albany, New York, city of his birth and muse to his imagination. Set in 1945, Roscoe centers on Roscoe Conway, sometime...

Percival Everett. Erasure.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Percival Everett. Erasure. Univ. Press of New England, 2001. 265 pp. $24.95. Percival Everett's new novel offers a compelling exploration of "the notion of a public and its relationship to the health of art." The protagonist, Thelonius...

Michael Martone. The Blue Guide to Indiana.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Michael Martone. The Blue Guide to Indiana. FC2, 2001. 120 pp. Paper: $12.95. The disclaimer pasted to the front of Michael Martone's latest expose of Indiana notifies readers that the book neither "factually depicts nor accurately...

Dee Goda. Orchid Jetsam.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Dee Goda. Orchid Jetsam. Tuumba, 2001. 172 pp. Paper: $15.00. Experimental in every sense of the word, Orchid Jetsam defies the very convention of the novel. Perhaps more important, however, is the fact that this is a detective novel (or a...

Magnus Mills. Three to See the King.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Magnus Mills. Three to See the King. Picador USA, 2001. 167 pp. $19.00. Mills's third novel, Three to See the King, has many of the qualities that made his first novel, The Restraint of Beasts, a finalist for the Booker Prize. The narrator...

Alfred Jarry. Collected Works of Alfred Jarry, Volume 1: Adventures in `Pataphysics.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Alfred Jarry. Collected Works of Alfred Jarry, Volume 1: Adventures in 'Pataphysics. Trans. Paul Edwards and Antony Melville. Ed. Alastair Brotchie and Paul Edwards. Atlas, 2001. 334 pp. Paper: $14.95. While widely known for his seminal...

Frederick Crews. Postmodern Pooh.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Frederick Crews. Postmodern Pooh. North Point, 2001. 175 pp. $22.00. At the beginning of his career Frederick Crews published The Pooh Perplex (1963), a lighthearted parody of literary criticism found in freshman casebooks. Thirty-eight...

A. J. Perry. Twelve Stories of Russia: A Novel, I Guess.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... A. J. Perry. Twelve Stories of Russia: A Novel, I Guess. Glas/Ivan R. Dee, 2001. 448 pp. Paper: $14.95. Twelve Stories of Russia: A Novel, I Guess documents one character's six-and-a-half years living in Russia during its troubled...

David Gilbert and Karl Roeseler, eds. Here Lies.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... David Gilbert and Karl Roeseler, eds. Here Lies. Trip Street, 2001. 248 pp. Paper: $13.00. The best anthologies these days center around a theme, whether it be private eyes, erotica, or war. True to its title, Here Lies presents stories...

Lucius Shepard. Valentine.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Lucius Shepard. Valentine. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002. 181 pp. $18.00. This valentine is a "complicated construction that has at its paper heart new memories, a painful history." It is sent by the narrator (a journalist) to "you," a...

Robert Coover. The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell).(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Robert Coover. The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell). Burning Deck, 2002. 64 pp. Paper: $10.00. The fantastic hotels described in this slim and beautiful volume--the first half of which was first published in the collection A Convergence of...

Cesare Pavese. The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Cesare Pavese. The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese. Trans. and intro. R. W. Flint. New York Review Books, 2001. 397 pp. Paper: $16.95. In four first-person novels Pavese renders with formidable talent extreme isolation, where people group...

Chris Bachelder. Bear v. Shark.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Chris Bachelder. Bear v. Shark. Scribner, 2001. 251 pp. $23.00. Constantine, the typical tyro playwright in Chekhov's The Seagull, famously rejects convention, cries out for new forms, and produces a tedious flop. Thankfully, Chris...

Hanif Kureishi. Gabriel's Gift.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Hanif Kureishi. Gabriel's Gift. Scribner, 2001. 223 pp. $23.00. Kureishi's latest book continues with the theme of existence in a postcolonial society, ground which he's already covered nicely in The Buddha of Suburbia and The Black Album....

Richard Burgin. The Spirit Returns.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Richard Burgin. The Spirit Returns. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001. 191 pp. Paper: $13.95. Burgin's landscape is a wasteland, its inhabitants suffering some form of ennui yet incapable of creating relationships that would sustain them....

Steve Aylett. The Crime Studio.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Steve Aylett. The Crime Studio. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001. 156 pp. Paper: $14.95. Steve Aylett's first book, originally published in Britain in 1994, embodies the point that laughter is many things, not the least of which is a...

Steve Weiner. The Yellow Sailor.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Steve Weiner. The Yellow Sailor. Overlook, 2001. 220 pp. $26.95. Steve Weiner's first novel, The Museum of Love (1994), drew comparisons to Burroughs, Celine, and Genet, as well as filmmakers Cronenberg, Lynch, and Todd Haynes, for its...

Ray Vukcevich. Meet Me in the Moon Room.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Ray Vukcevich. Meet Me in the Moon Room. Small Beer, 2001. 253 pp. Paper: $16.00. Ray Vukcevich is a master of the last line. Almost every one of his stories has a zinger at the end, but not the kind of zinger that shocks the reader or...

Peter Rock. The Ambidextrist.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Peter Rock. The Ambidextrist. Context, 2002. 214 pp. $21.95. The Ambidextrist focuses on Scott, a vagabond who comes to Philadelphia to outpace his past and who hooks on at a hospital, making money as a subject for medical experiments....

Reinaldo Arenas. Mona and Other Tales.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Reinaldo Arenas. Mona and Other Tales. Selected and trans. Dolores M. Koch. Vintage, 2001. 190 pp. Paper: $12.00. Regardless of what some may say in this age of content over form, there is a melody to some prose that announces to the reader...

Mary Robison. Why Did I Ever.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Mary Robison. Why Did I Ever. Counterpoint, 2001. 200 pp. $23.00. Mary Robison's first novel in ten years is less a novel than a collection of 536 fragments chronicling the life of Money Breton, a failing Hollywood script doctor, three-time...

Arthur Bradford. Dogwalker.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Arthur Bradford. Dogwalker. Knopf, 2001. 144 pp. $20.00. The epilogue to this collection of stories describes a dream about a book that is not restricted to reality but that follows the course of its own invented reality. It is worth...

Jean-Patrick Manchette. 3 to Kill.
June 22, 2002... Jean-Patrick Manchette. 3 to Kill. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. City Lights, 2002. 134 pp. Paper: $11.95. What's essential is not so much a reinvention of the novel as an ongoing redefinition of it. Beginning in the early seventies,...

Paul Wilson. Someone to Watch Over Me.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Paul Wilson. Someone to Watch Over Me. Granta, 2001. 244 pp. 12.99 [pounds sterling]. This novel, both a theological and secular mystery, takes its title from the Gershwin song, in which a young woman sings longingly for a lover. The...

Paul LaFarge. Haussmann, or the Distinction.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Paul LaFarge. Haussmann, or the Distinction. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001. 382 pp. $24.00. The central figure of Paul LaFarge's second novel is Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann, the architect of modern Paris, who introduced the civic order...

Frederick Busch. War Babies.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Frederick Busch. War Babies. New Directions, 2001. 114 pp. Paper: $12.95. During Frederick Busch's prolific career there have been some notable gems, including War Babies, first published in 1989. War Babies, like his superb early novel...

Barry Hannah. Yonder Stands Your Orphan.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Barry Hannah. Yonder Stands Your Orphan. Atlantic, 2001. 336 pp. $24.00. Hannah's latest novel is his first in ten years--since 1991's Never Die he's published only two collections of (quite strong) stories. Taking its title from a Bob...

Dan Chaon. Among the Missing.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Dan Chaon. Among the Missing. Ballantine, 2001. 258 pp. $22.00. Among the Missing, Dan Chaon's second collection of stories, is a fascinating blend of postmodern conditions many writers and readers tend to skip over in their attempts to...

Gerald Locklin. A Simpler Time, A Simpler Place: Three Mid-Century Stories.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Gerald Locklin. A Simpler Time, A Simpler Place: Three Mid-Century Stories. Event Horizon, 2000. 167 pp. Paper: $12.95. The three stories comprising this collection perform a meticulous examination of repressed sexuality and the desires...

Edward Carey. Observatory Mansions.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Edward Carey. Observatory Mansions. Crown, 2000. 356 pp. $23.00. I am pleased that Vintage has just reprinted this novel in paperback. There were few reviews of the cloth edition, despite the fact that it was hailed as "brilliant" by John...

Lydia Davis. Samuel Johnson Is Indignant: Stories.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Lydia Davis. Samuel Johnson Is Indignant: Stories. McSweeney's, 2001. 201 pp. $17.00. In her latest collection, the author of Break It Down (1986) and Almost No Memory (1997) delivers fifty-six scintillating stories that showcase her...

Annie Ernaux. Happening.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Annie Ernaux. Happening. Trans. Tanya Leslie. Seven Stories, 2001. 95 pp. $18.95. In Happening Ernaux returns to the experience of her illegal abortion that she plumbed in Cleaned Out. While that book used fiction to explain and expunge,...

Terry Southern. Now Dig This: the Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern 1950-1995.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Terry Southern. Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern 1950-1995. Ed. Nile Southern and Josh Alan Friedman. Grove, 2001. 263 pp. $25.00. Now Dig This collects thirty-five miscellaneous outrages perpetrated by the esteemed...

Peter Carey. 30 Days in Sydney.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Peter Carey. 30 Days in Sydney. Bloomsbury, 2001. 248 pp. $16.95. In the summer of 2000, while the world focused its attention on the pockets of Sydney given over to hosting the Olympic games, novelist Peter Carey returned to the city he...

Amy J. Elias. Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Amy J. Elias. Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001. 320 pages. $42.50. Sublime Desire constitutes a major contribution to the growing body of work on contemporary historical fiction, which Elias...

Philip Tew. B. S. Johnson: A Critical Reading.
June 22, 2002... Philip Tew. B. S. Johnson: A Critical Reading. Manchester Univ. Press, 2001. 274 pp. $69.95. A search in the MLA International Bibliography turns up twenty-four references to work about B. S. Johnson, once one of England's most...

A. S. Byatt. On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... A. S. Byatt. On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays. Harvard Univ. Press, 2001. 196 pp. $22.95. A. S. Byatt is at her best in this collection when explaining her own work, not least because she provides very concrete suggestions for...

Ekbert Faas. Robert Creeley: A Biography.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Ekbert Faas. Robert Creeley: A Biography. With Maria Trombacco. Univ. Press of New England, 2001. 513 pp. $35.00. Ekbert Faas has chosen an audacious style for the first biography of one of the greatest American poets. Faas focuses on the...

Books received.(Bibliography)
June 22, 2002... Allen, Jack. When the Whistle Blows. Dedalus, 2002. $13.99. (F) Anderson, Donald. Fire Road. Univ. of Iowa Press, 2001. Paper: $15.95. (F) Arlt, Roberto. Mad Toy. Trans. and intro. Michele McKay Aynesworth. Duke Univ. Press, 2002....